


Ears

by The_Sickfic_Sideblog



Series: Being Galra [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Being Galra, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-24 13:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13215243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Sickfic_Sideblog/pseuds/The_Sickfic_Sideblog
Summary: Keith can't sleep with all the new noises.





	Ears

**Author's Note:**

> Nearly a year later, it returns! Happy New Year!

_Ka-chunka. Ka-chunka. Whrrrrrrrr-clunk._

_I need to sleep._

_Ka-chunka. Ka-chunka. Whrrrrrrrr-clunk._

_We have training tomorrow. I need to rest._

_Ka-chunka. Ka-chunka. Wrrrrrrrr-wrrrrr-wrrrr-wrrrr-wrrr-_

Keith’s eyes drifted open. It was hard to sleep when it sounded like the castleship was screaming at him. Every creak, every groan, every mechanical part of the castleship rang in his ears like an emergency broadcast. It didn’t help that the castleship was however many years old and probably needed oiling up.

This was not a new occurrence. The instant Keith stepped onto Red after leaving the Blade of Marmora’s base, he could hear  _everything_ , and the castleship was much worse. During the daytime, he had things like training and other people to distract him. But now that he was trying to get some rest, he was alone with his thoughts and the awful  _whrrr-_ _clunk_ -ing.

It felt like hours and hours before Keith decided to get up and walk around. The clock beside him said he’d only been trying to sleep for half a varga. He grumbled and shoved on those awful Red Lion slippers, finding that they were actually quite comfortable for their horrible style. With his feet covered, his knife sheathed, and his ears pressed tight against his head to block everything out, the Red Paladin walked.

Keith wandered up and down the corridors, trying to find a quieter place that he could snooze. He’d be willing to sleep on the training mats if he had to, but there was something unsettling about the training bots looming over him, even if they were powered down. ‘ _Powered down’ my ass,_  he thought as he walked past them,  _The ghost of possessed Alfor might come back to haunt me._

The healing bay was no better. It had unsettling medical equipment and restraints, things he was positive would’ve been used on him if his fellow paladins weren’t so empathetic. As he passed by one of the pods, he startled at his own reflection and whipped around with his knife gripped tightly, ready to stab the Galra that’d invaded their- _oh_. He put the knife away and continued on.

Eventually, Keith made his way to the bridge. He didn’t intend on going there, his feet and ears just led him. There wasn’t the usual castleship sound of idling as everyone slept, there was the sound of tech being actively used. But he passed by all of his fellow paladins’ rooms, no one else was awake, right?

Knife out again, Keith crept onto the bridge and found the white-haired princess projecting the star maps like she did on their first meeting. This was absolutely no better than an intruder. They hadn’t spoken directly yet - she still addressed him and let him work as a paladin, but they’d never interacted  _alone_. He considered turning around and just stuffing socks in his ears to help him sleep, but Allura turned around before he could run out.

“Couldn’t sleep either, Keith?”

The Red Paladin squinted a bit and put away his knife. “How did you hear me..?”

“Alteans have heightened hearing. Not as strong as Galra, but we do.”

Keith didn’t read Allura as dismissive, just informative as usual. Her tones didn’t have any disdain or even lack of friendship. In fact, there could’ve been a touch of empathy in there, regarding the hearing. He blinked a few times before walking up to the control panel with her and looking at the star maps. He still kept his distance, enough to jump back if she decided to smack him.

“Is the castleship keeping you up?” Allura asked, going right back to her mapping. Keith was immediately aware of all the ambient noises again and nodded.

“Yeah. Better hearing, like you said.”

“She woke me up as well. She’s a bit old and rusty, we need to get in and do some oil work. Too big for the mice to do, we’ll have to do it ourselves.” She smiled as she said this, and Keith noticed the mice on the panel, looking relieved that they didn’t have to do more heavy work.

The two were in silence for a bit. It was as if Allura was daring Keith to say something to fill it. The  _whrr-_ _clunk_ -ing only made it worse, and Keith could only grit his teeth for so long.

“Allura, the elephant in the room?”

“The what?” She looked around the deck with confusion.

“Nevermind, it’s an expression. But...you don’t hate me.” It was more of a question than a statement, but he phrased it as such, just in case.

Allura paused for a decent amount of time before starting up a simulator. Keith immediately recognized it as his own solar system, and his ears perked in attention. He could see Earth twirling just as it always did, paired with her moon and warmed by the sun. A deep, deep ache settled in his chest.

“No, I don’t hate you.”

Allura moved from the control panel and let it descend, then sat herself on the ground and looked up at the system above her. This answer was not good enough for Keith. He crossed his arms and pulled his gaze away from his home planet. “Why not?”

“You’ve given me no reason to.”

“Okay, well _yes_ , that’s what Shiro and everyone keeps saying, but come on!” He sounded a bit more desperate now. “That can’t be true, we all hate the Galra! Especially you and Coran, you both had your home planet destroyed-”

“I  _know_ , Keith.” Allura raised her voice but didn’t yell. “You don’t need to remind me of that.”

“Then why don’t you hate my purple guts?!”

The princess took a long pause, then patted the space next to her in a motion for him to sit. “I did. For a little while, I really hated you. I think I put on a few extra pounds of muscle just taking it all to one of those training robots.”

She let those words hang as Keith sat down next to her, still keeping a bit of his distance. “And...I don’t think it was especially wrong to feel that hate. Like you said, my home planet was destroyed. My gut instinct was to hate. That didn’t get to me as much. What was wrong was that I felt... _betrayed_. Like you were some...I don’t know, some sleeper agent. And if you were, what if all the other paladins were? Or Coran?”

The princess laid down on the deck, her neck starting to crane from looking up too long. “I get the sense that perhaps you were feeling that too. Except internally instead of externally.”

Keith continued to watch his own home planet, contemplating the thought. He remembered the few nightmares he’d gotten about getting executive orders to destroy Voltron from the inside or assassinate his friends on the spot. The self-betrayal was another thing to wrestle with - if this was who he truly was, who was he back then?  “...yeah. You could say that.”

“So there’s you answer. I did hate you for a while there. But no longer. After I calmed down, it felt wrong to hate you. You did nothing wrong, and were probably just as scared as I was. I couldn’t hate you any more. So I don’t.” Allura tore her eyes from the sun to look at Keith. “I hope that’s the same with you.”

Keith only shrugged a little and crossed his arms. He wasn’t the best of cognitive awareness on a good day, and these were certainly some not-so-good days. “I can say for sure that I’ll never  _not_  hate these ears. I can hear the engines roaring all the way in here.” She laughed a bit, and he even cracked a bit of a smile. “I don’t think they’ll even fit in the helmets now. They can squish in there, but it hurts after a while, and the sound is all skewed.”

“I can make modifications for that.”

“You can?”

“How do you think Alteans put helmets on? We’ve learned to leave extra room for our ears, I’m sure I could modify yours, just on a larger scale.”

“Shouldn’t Hunk be doing that?”

Allura scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Are you saying I can’t grind down the inside of a paladin helmet? And rewire the insides for 360-degree audio mapping calibrated to your Lion and your surroundings?”

Keith’s smile grew a bit. “No, I’m guessing you absolutely can.”

“Damn right.”

The two laughed, and Keith finally laid down next to her to look up at his galaxy. The silence surrounded them again, but this time it wasn’t met with challenge or awkwardness. After a few rotations of Earth, Allura took a breath.

“Tell me about the sounds on Earth.”

“Mm?”

“What did it sound like, where you were? Lance always describes how blue it is with the oceans and the rain, and Pidge focuses on humans and the strides they’ve made, and of course Hunk talks about culture and food and dancing and how humans  _live_. But I still don’t feel like I know what it’s like to  _exist_  there.”

Keith thought about it for a long time before beginning to talk. He spoke of the waterfalls and the rainforests, about all the cars and technology that the Garrison had made and how they sound when taking off. He spoke of his little desert shack and the night calls that the native fauna made. Before long, both of their eyes were starting to droop shut.

“It sounds lovely. I can’t wait to hear it for myself...”

“I can’t wait to hear it again either.”


End file.
